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Win WHAT??? The Afghan tribes have been merrily slitting each other's throats for the last 5000 years, and, when they haven't been doing that, they've been making life miserable for foreign invaders…in fct our word, FOREIGNER, comes from their word, Feringei, a word that means both "outsider" and "enemy". Alexander the Great found it impossible, the British army got their butt handed to them, the Red Army got its butt kicked..we're just the latest in a long line…and, for what? THERE'S NOTHING OF ANY VALUE THERE!
Sure – but we'd have to colonize the place.
No. I agree with Mike H. The only way to win anything is to have something that is winnable. Nobody either foreign or domestic has been able to tame Afghanistan. One comparison is the saying, "Its like herding cats!" The people follow no leaders, they change allegiances like I change underwear.
Only they can decide who they will tolerate the longest and that decision is absolutely inevitable to be changed. We are just an irritant and the best we can hope for is to get out of their with some integrity and not get chased out…probably by our own allies.
Had Bush followed up on his initial destruction of the Taliban and Al Queda and not become distracted in Iraq we might hope for a stalemate of sorts as the Afghanis settle under Karzai but he left a power vacuum and the Taliban will ultimately fill it again unless the Afghanis say no…thats not likely to happen and we can't do it for them. Its time to get out…the sooner the better. .
VERY WELL STATED, MIKE H. COULD NOT HAVE SAID IT BETTER MESELF.
NO
Tend to agree with the majority here, we're wasting our time on this little corner of the world. "How many Afgans does it take to change a lightbulb?" About 33.5 million of them, and then only if they all agree to it.